For All the Wrong Reasons (36 page)

I'm young, free and single, Diana thought. Why not enjoy it?

Tonight was one of the more vital moments on the social calendar. A fund-raiser for the new Republican mayoral candidate. Diana wasn't a voter, but that didn't matter; half the people here were registered Democrats. The point was that the place was full of celebrities and power brokers, New York's television and media elite. Donald Trump was flying in from Atlantic City; Si Newhouse, Tina Brown, Barry Diller, the usual suspects were all expected. Hip young movie stars mixed with record moguls and starving artists, who had the thousand-dollars-a-plate tickets courtesy of their patrons in real estate or investment banking. Designers and mafia dons, who these days preferred Wall Street to the fish markets, plastic surgeons and minor princes would all rub shoulders here—and then again at the fund-raiser for the Democrats' candidate two months later.

Diana would be sitting next to Elspeth. Shaking hands, smiling at people she knew—as well as people she didn't, you had to be nice, because if you weren't who knew when it might bite you in the ass?—she made her way through the ballroom to find her table. The Victrix was the most exclusive hotel in the city. It made the Plaza look like a YMCA hostel on a bad day. The parties were usually themed; tonight it was vaguely Republican. Torches that blazed with red, white and blue flames were propped in crystal sconces along the walls, and huge floral pillars fifteen feet high were covered in roses, poppies, hyacinths, arum lilies, any flowers that might contribute to the theme. Diana's eyes widened a little. She was getting rather jaded with American opulence, but—wasn't that an actual, incredibly rare, white Thai elephant in the center of the room, with a keeper dressed all in gold mounted upon him? She blinked. It was, definitely. You didn't know whether to look at the decor or the guests first. The stars with glasses in their hands were illuminated by chandeliers in the shape of stars and glass bubbles, strategically placed along barely there wires, that made you feel as though you were inside a glass of champagne. A waiter, dressed in a dark-blue suit—his colleagues were in reds and whites, too, of course—bowed and asked if madame preferred Cristal, vintage Krug, or perhaps Veuve Clicquot Rosé?

Slightly dazzled, Diana accepted the rosé. She liked Veuve Clicquot and, after all, the bubbly would now coordinate with her dress. She started to repent of having gone for something simple. There were women here in ball gowns. After the austerity of the nineties, it seemed that full-out glamor was making a bit of a comeback. But it was too late now. She took a slow, fortifying sip of the champagne, letting the bubbles sparkle over her tongue. There were table plans written out in beautiful calligraphy all over the room. She found one, and tried to ferret out her own name from the hundreds in front of her by the bloodred glow of one of the lamps. She couldn't see Elspeth's name either, but they were bound to be next to each other—

“Having trouble?”

Diana looked around. The voice, just behind her, was warm and friendly, definitely unusual for a party like this, where the guests would kiss each other all night long, then go home and bitch afterward. It was also male. It belonged to a tall man, with what looked like light-brown hair, though the lamp made it hard to see. He had clean-cut features, sparkling eyes, white teeth and, she noted, a marvelous white-tie suit. Many of the male guests had ignored the invitation and turned up in tuxedos. Not this one.

“Slightly,” she admitted. “My eyesight isn't bad, but the light—”

“Do allow me.” He offered her a firm handshake. “My name's Brad Bailey.”

“And mine's Diana Verity,” she said. He was confident, and she liked that. He had an open smile and an easy manner. And he was at least four inches taller than Michael, not that she was going to think about Michael.

“I know.” Brad grinned at her. “I've seen your picture around. And that accent is beautiful.”

“Thank you.”

“I hope you don't mind that I took the liberty of introducing myself. I just remembered that joke in
Ten Little Indians,
ever seen that movie?”

She shook her head instead of saying no so that her diamond earrings caught the light. It was easy to like this man.

“You should, it's real funny. Anyway, this Irish guy says he'd heard two Englishmen were stranded on a desert island for five years and never said a word to each other because they hadn't been introduced.”

Diana laughed.

What a stone-cold fox, Bailey thought, with a body that could make a dead man rise and do the mambo. He loved her dress, her loose, long, brown hair, the delicate scent of flowers that hung about her. And the way she talked. Those English broads just exuded cool. Look at Princess Diana. The woman actually had a nose like a Concorde, but she had borne herself with such confidence and classy style that she had been thought the most beautiful woman in the world. This girl was the same way. Brad indulged in a little fantasy of Diana in tennis whites, sipping a lemonade on the court of his country club.

“I'm afraid we can come across as rather stuffy, but on the other hand, we produced the Beatles and the Stones. So you work it out.”

“I'd love to,” he said, smiling down at her. “But I think I might need some time to do it. Say, dinner?”

“Maybe,” Diana said, surprising herself. “First I have to find my place at this dinner.”

“Excuse me for just a second,” he said, bowing slightly and moving away.

Diana's eyebrow lifted. He was chatting her up and then excused himself? So be it. After Ernie, she was in no mood to play games. Seething, she bent closer to the table plan and found her name. Table eighty-nine. Now she had to look on the floor plan and see if she could find table eighty-nine, wherever it was. There were enough tables in the ballroom to stock a branch of Ikea, except that these particular tables would not be found there. Solid mahogany and gold accents weren't their style. She scanned the picture, ignoring the flautists and girls in robes with miniature harps who strolled behind her. Eighty-nine … but Elspeth wasn't there. She must be ill. Diana frowned lightly. She would have to make conversation on her own, and—

“I'm back.” Brad Bailey tapped her on the arm.

“So you are,” Diana said evenly.

He admired her. Damn, she was cool. An American girl would have harangued him, or batted her eyelids in the face of his money and pretended not to care.

“Please excuse my abandoning you,” he said. “I had to speak to Fred Layton, he's organizing stuff here. I promised him an extra donation if he would alter the seating plan a little.” He leaned forward and struck through her name on table eighty-nine. “You are here now on table three. With me.”

Diana's delicate eyebrow lifted. “You got the seats rearranged? I'm sure I'm not worth such trouble.”

“It would have been worth a good deal more than that,” Brad told her, thinking of the eight grand he'd had to promise to compensate for the last-minute chaos, the hasty apologies made to the wealthy dowager who was being ejected from her prime seat next to him. He crooked his arm and hoped an English gentleman would have done it in the same fashion. “Shall we go to dinner?”

Diana's reservations melted. He was funny and charming and solicitous. I
deserve
someone like this, she told herself.

“Thank you. That would be lovely,” she said.

*   *   *

Brad was good at introductions. Even Diana was impressed by the rest of their table. There was Fred Drasner, owner of the
News,
on her left, and the governor's wife on his right. Two film stars and a princess of Monaco were broken up by a Nobel Prize winner and a huge, tall basketball player. She wondered where Felicity Metson was sitting. She would gnaw her heart out if she could see Diana now.

She greeted everyone politely, curtsied to the princess, and settled down to wonder about her escort through the speeches that were bound to follow. Brad Bailey? He knew everybody, he was well liked, rich went without saying. He had a nice body, a gym-lover's body, even if he didn't lift many weights.

“You have the advantage of me,” Diana said. “You know who I am, but I can't say the same.”

He nodded. “I'm in real estate. I own Bailey Realtors. You won't have seen the name because we don't advertise much. Mostly we deal in high-end properties in Manhattan, Westchester and Long Island, with a little work upstate.”

“What qualifies as high end?”

“Anything from eight or nine million up, basically.”

Diana studied her menu. Caviar blinis followed by duck with a fresh pea confit, then apple charlotte with vanilla-scented cream.

“How did you get into that?”

“It's a family business. My father built it up.” Brad shrugged apologetically. “I can't claim to be a self-made man.”

“Let me guess.” She found she was teasing him. She leaned closer, and he breathed in the perfume of roses and tried not to stare at the freckled slopes of her glorious tits. “A large family house in Brooklyn Heights, and pony lessons at weekends?”

“Almost. A country estate in Westchester, a townhouse in the city, and stables with horses.”

“And a private jet,” Diana suggested.

“Of course,” he said seriously.

She swallowed. “It sounds pleasant.”

“It is. I tend to commute in from my place at Scarsdale in Westchester these days, though. I like waking up to greenery.”

“I can understand that,” Diana said faintly.

“It gets me out of the city. I go to things like this because I suppose I have to.”

“Where else would you find people that want to buy and sell places starting at eight million?”

“Exactly,” he said, pleased at her perceptiveness. “You're a businesswoman, too, I know.”

“A headhunter, really. And—it's not quite so high powered,” she said dryly.

“I hope your schedule will spare time for dinner?” he said hopefully.

She gestured to her plate. “Aren't we having dinner?”

He looked forlorn. “Ah. You're going to tear a new hole in my heart.”

Diana laughed again. “Come, Brad. You must have a million girls chasing you.”

“I do,” he said factually. “But I don't like girls who chase. I like girls who are chased.”

“Like me?”

Brad gave her another warm smile. He was golden, she thought, all-American, tanned and healthy.

“Exactly like you. So please put me out of my misery. Say yes.”

THIRTY-FOUR

Michael was out running at quarter to six in the morning, the wonderful dawn hour when the city that never sleeps actually sleeps. Apart from the odd cop coming off the night shift and the fresh-produce men driving to the markets to pick up the day's selections, the wide concrete canyons of Manhattan were deserted. He had a membership to several fancy gyms now and kept up the karate, which was good to work off his frustrations over Diana, that ice-cold English bitch. But nothing blew the cobwebs from Michael's mind like running in the empty city. He pounded the concrete and leapt between cross-streets down which no cars were coming. The clean open lines of the New York grid almost pulled his feet along them, challenging him to go faster and harder. Most city joggers preferred the park, but that was far too bland for Michael. Why circle around and around a fairly ordinary lake when you could be plunging through the shuttered record stores of the East Village, or past the manicured gardens on West Eleventh? Why bother with a hundred other runners on the same beaten track when the Museum Mile, with the stunning apartment buildings of Park Avenue, was so close and could be your exclusive playground? And best of all was midtown, where the giant glass and slate towers jabbed up into the sky like so many accusing fingers. He liked to time his run so that, whatever the route, he finished up with a dash through Times Square, with its massive billboards and scrolling lights dominating the morning sky. Times Square used to be a spot for hookers, but the city crackdowns had tidied them all away. Now it was a place for chic little hotels, huge chain stores and theme restaurants. It was still the neon, beating heart of his city. Cicero thought of New York as modern man's answer to the pyramids. He liked stopping, drenched with sweat, the muscles of his legs worked out, all his tension driven into the ground, to gaze up at the colossal billboards. It was one of the best parts of the day.

But not today.

Today, when he glanced up, he felt anger seethe in the pit of his stomach like molten acid. He found his normal deep breathing was ragged. He frowned, wiped the sweat from his forehead, and frowned again.

EDUCATION STATION
, said the caption. The words were emblazoned over a sweet little kid with a pudding-bowl haircut smiling as he glanced at a paper marked “A.” Underneath that was a blow-up shot of a CD-ROM called
Scientist Sam.
The cute Muppetlike animal that represented Scientist Sam was a total rip-off of Gecko, the character star of his best-selling game.

Michael digested the ad for a few seconds, then turned around. Usually he walked home after his run. Today he was going to wing it. He didn't have time to walk.

*   *   *

The phone purred by Diana's bed, and she reached out a languid hand to pick it up. She was tired; last night Brad had taken her ice-skating at a private rink on the Upper West Side, and then moved her into Le Cirque for dinner, before finishing off with a nightcap at his house on East Seventieth. He'd been funny as usual, urbane and sophisticated, and very solicitous about her wants. He didn't push himself forward, and after taking her home, had actually asked her permission to plant a kiss on her cheek. His lips were soft and gentle.

He was almost a dream, she thought. So clean-cut and good-looking he could be a male model if he wasn't a super-successful real-estate broker. Elspeth Merriman had been in fits about the fact that he had asked her out.